"As long as women are hindered from visibility and work outside home, Saudi Arabia will lack 50% of their human capital."

IKEA apologized Monday for the airbrushing, saying it "regrets what has happened and understands that people are upset."

"It is not the local franchisee that has requested the retouch of the discussed pictures. The mistake happened during the work process occurring before presenting the draft catalog for IKEA Saudi Arabia. We take full responsibility for the mistakes made," the company said.

"We're beyond that right now in Saudi Arabia," she told CNN. "With Internet and satellite TV, there's really no such thing anymore as blacking out women or airbrushing out women. I would be upset if something like Google was doing it, but for IKEA to do it, that's just marketing -- it's not such a big deal."

Images in international magazines had been customarily censored. But times seem to have changed a bit, she said.

A year ago, for example, the shoulders and stomachs in the images of women in tube tops would be colored with a marker.

"They would go through each individual magazine with a black marker and color in any skin that was showing or tear out pages," she said.

"Now they don't. It's strange -- almost like they gave up. I saw a woman wearing a miniskirt on the cover of a magazine when I was at the grocery store," she said.

Just the same, she said, censored images are not unusual.

"I don't think it's right, but it's the culture. Even women who wear the hijab who appear in street advertising posters -- you see that their faces are pixelated and blurred."